The Baltimore County union., 1887-06-18
Bill Nye's Railway Pass.
Lines on Returning the Blasted Document
to the Genial Giver.

Lines on Returning the Blasted Document
to the Genial Giver.
HUDSON, WIS, March 80, 1887.
W. +. White, Esq.,, General Passenger
agent AteAis0n, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railroad, Topeka, Kan.
Dear SIR Il inclose herewith annu-
al pass No. Q o35 for self and family
over your justly celebrated road during
the year 1887. I also return your pho
tograph and the letters you have writ
ten me during the past five years. Will
you kindly return mine? And so this
brief and beautiful experience is to end
and each of us must 60 his own way
hereafter.
Alas!
To you this may be easy, but it
brings pang to my heart which your
gentle letter of the 1st inst. cannot
wholly alleviate.
Whenever hereafter you look upon
this tear-speckled pass will you not
think of me? Remember that you have
cast me from you and that am wander
ing across the bleak and windswept
plains sadly enumerating the ties on
my way to eternity.
I do not say this to reproach you, for
I fear that you care for another, and so
we could not be happy again together.
But, oh !! do you pause to fully compre-
hend the pang it costs me to return this
pleasant-faced little pass with its condi-
tions on the back? Could you see me
even now, as I write these lines, turn
ing away ever and anon, laying aside
my trembling pen to 60 and sit by the
CRATE and shudder and weep and put
out the fire with my bitter tears, your
heart would soften and you would say:
Return, o wanderer, return!
You do not say in your letter that I
have been false to you or that / have
ever grown cold. You do not charge
me with infdelity or failure to provide.
You simply say that it would be better
for each to 60 his several ways forget
ting that my several ways are passing
away, passing away.
1t is all we'll enough for you to talk
about going your several ways. You
have every facility for doing SO, but
with me it is different. Several years
ago large Northwestern cyclone and
myself tried to pass each other on the
same track. When the wrecking crew
found me 1 was in the crotch of butter
nut tree, with a broken leg. Since that
time 1 have walked with great Difficult
ty, and to go my several ways has been
very serious matter with me.
But I do not want you to think that
I am murmuring. accept my doom
calmly, yet with slight tinge of una
vailing regret.
Some time perhaps, in the middle of
the dark and angry night, when the
cold blasts wall through the telegraph
wires and the crashing sleet rushes with
wild and impetuous fury against the
windows of your special car, as you lie
warmly ensconced in your voluptuous
berth and hear the pitiless winds with
hoarse and croupy means chase each
other around the Kansas haystacks or
shrek wildly away as they light out for
their cherries home in the Bad Lands,
will you not think of me as I grope on
blindly though the keen and pitiless
blasts, stumbling over cattle-guards,
falling into culverts and beating out my
rare young brains against your rough
right of way, will you not think of me?
1 do not ask much of you, but do ask
this as we separate forever.
As you whiz by me do not treat me
with contumely, or throw crackers at
me when I have meekly turned out to
let your naughty old train 60 by. 1
have always spoken of you in highest
terms, and hope you will do the same
by me.
Life is short at the best, and it is es-
pecially so for those who have to walk.
Walking has already shortened my life
a great deal, and I wouldn't be surprised
if the exposure and hunions of the year
1887 carried me off, leaving a gap in
American literature that will look like a
new cellar.
Should any of your engineers or track
men find me frozen in cut next winter,
when the grass gets short and the nights
get long, will you kindly ask them to
report the brand to your auditor and
instruct him to allow my family what
he thinks would be right7 I hate to
write to you in this detected manner,
but you cannot understand how heavy
my heart is to-day as pen these lines.
1 wish you and your beautiful road
unmitigated success. 1t is good road,
for I have passed over it and enjoyed
it. How different the country will
look to me as go bounding from tie
to tic, slowly repeating to myself the
trite remark once made by the Cover
nor of North Carolina to the Executive
of South Carolina!
I hope you may never know what it
is to pull into the quaint little city OF
La Junta with the dust of many mile
upon you and the thirst of long, un-
eventful journey in your throat. l
hope that Congress will not pass law
next year which will make it felony
for a railroad man to say gosh with
out a permit. l hope that your life
will be chuck full of hurrah and halle.
lujah, even if mine should he always
black and joyless.
Can l do your road any good, either
at home or abroad7 Can ! be of ser